Normal Life
by Person4
Summary: After the events of Sons of Liberty, Raiden does his best to forge a normal life with Rose. A normal life that Solid Snake keeps appearing in. Snake/Raiden. AU from MGS4 although certain details are pulled from it. Written for Yuletide 2008.


Raiden stared at the bottom of his glass and considered asking for another.

It had become a routine. He would spend the day searching for some type of normal, violence-free job; an exercise in futility since he'd discovered that every form of ID he had available had either been faked by The Patriots to begin with, or had neatly been erased from all official databases as soon as he walked away from them. Either way, since the ever-so-polite call from the one person who had considered hiring him informing him that he must have misremembered his social security number only to read exactly the number on his card to him, he'd realized that might as well have been a illegal immigrant.

Admittedly, that didn't make finding a job impossible. Finding a job that paid jack shit was another story. Raiden knew that he hardly deserved to have much pride, but he'd be damned before he took a job breaking his back moving crates at the pier for a buck-fifty an hour. It was just lucky that they hadn't played the same trick on Rose, and in the information age it had been easy enough for her to find a decent job with her skills.

After the day's fruitless search he'd always end up in the same bar at twilight, sitting on the same stool if possible, ordering the same drink. Three fingers of scotch, neat. He didn't even care for it much, but he remembered from years before, in the rare times when there was both alcohol available and enough of a lull in the unending battle for men (what men there were amongst the children) who weren't complete idiots to risk indulging a little, that it had been the drink preferred by the man he'd once thought of as 'father'.

There wasn't much Raiden could do in remembrance of Solidus. Wasn't much that he even _wanted_ to do, considering the person he'd eventually become. But, in this one small way, he could show his respect to the man he had once been. The one who, Raiden had come to remember, had provided the few small moments of peace he'd been given in the middle of the war.

Every day when he reached the bottom of his glass he'd think about getting more. Give up on being responsible for just one night and drink until he couldn't think straight before he finally went home. After all the crap he'd been through, he'd think, didn't he deserve a chance to try and forget just for one night?

Of course, trying to forget had been part the reason he'd ended up in that mess to begin with.

Every night he'd ultimately decide against it, but it got harder each time.

o 0 O 0 o

"You look like you've had a tough day, kid," Snake said, settling onto the stool beside him.

"_Wha?!_" Raiden exclaimed, kicking himself around to look at the man with such force that he accidentally knocked his own stool backwards. He would have fallen right over if Snake hadn't casually caught the side of the seat, setting it, and him, easily back upright. Raiden would have been embarrassed that he'd been too startled to get his balance back himself, except that he was pretty sure that he was _exactly startled enough_. When a mysterious legendary soldier gives you a very final feeling goodbye speech then vanishes without a trace, not even responding the few times you give calling their Codec frequency a shot on a whim, they don't just suddenly reappear in your life by plopping down next to you in a seedy bar.

But if Snake was playing it cool, Raiden would follow his lead. And hope that Snake was willing to ignore that he'd just been two seconds away from looking like a complete idiot. "Tough month," he finally answered, pretending that first flabbergasted moment had never happened.

Snake just grunted in response, busy waving over the bartender to order himself a beer and lighting up a cigarette.

If Snake wasn't feeling talkative, Raiden guessed that getting down to business was his job, even if he had no idea what that business happened to be. "What are you doing here, Sssss..." he trailed off into a hiss, realizing that calling him by a name that still hadn't been cleared of terrorist charges, especially when people were still twitchy after the Big Shell incident, probably wasn't the best idea. "...Uh, should I go back to calling you 'Pliskin?'" he asked, lowering his voice.

"Whatever makes you happy, kid," he said, sounding amused by the question. Maybe he just liked being called by the name of an action movie character. Or maybe he thought it was funny that a fake name he'd pulled out of his ass had stuck. Raiden never could tell for sure what was going through his head. "Heard you were trying to get in touch," he went on, tapping his ear lightly. "Otacon was able to track you down, something about tracing your frequency. Said this would be a good place to catch you."

Raiden grimaced at the reminder of the machines still flowing through his veins. There was no way to get rid of them; he had no idea where his real blood had been stashed after they'd pumped out of his body, and even if he found out, knew how to get it back in him, and could smuggle it out of some Patriot stronghold, it wasn't like he could risk it when Olga's kid's life might still be connected to the nanos transmitting his vitals. He hated that as long as they were in him The Patriots always had an eye on him and a way to get in touch once more, but he didn't have a choice.

"He said to let you know he's working on a way to keep anyone else from hunting you down that way, without putting the kid at risk. It'll take a while. Faster if we can hunt down an old friend," he said, as if in response to those thoughts. He took a swig of his drink and glanced at Raiden. "What was it you needed?"

"I... Nothing," Raiden admitted. He wasn't sure whether he should feel more embarrassed or awed that _Solid Snake_ was willing to come looking for him over nothing more than a couple of pointless missed calls. Of course, awe had gotten harder after all they'd been through together. Especially after the man had pretty much recited a love letter to cardboard boxes into his ear. "Everything was so nuts back on the Plant," he admitted. "Sometimes I just feel like I need to try getting in touch with somebody else who knows what happened there. Someone aside from Rose, who wasn't in on what they were doing to me. Make sure that I didn't go completely insane and hallucinate the whole damned thing."

"Do you feel insane?"

"No, but isn't that what a nutcase would say?" Raiden replied, with a small laugh that didn't come out nearly as self-deprecating as it seemed like it should. "I mean, what makes more sense? A mental breakdown, or actually meeting a bullet-dodging vampire who dances on water?"

"Doesn't sound any crazier than a flying psychic in a gas mask to me," Snake said with a shrug. Then he took a drag of his cigarette and eyeballed Raiden. "If you were just looking for a chat, Otacon's still using the same frequency. You never tried to get in touch with him."

Raiden had the distinct feeling that he was being judged, and that Snake really would be walking out of his life for good this time if he found Raiden's excuses for shunning his friend wanting. He just hoped that his reason passed muster, even if he knew it was a cowardly one. "I figured he wouldn't want to talk to me, after what happened to Emma. I mean, I know he was nice enough when he was giving me advice at the end there, but that was more about saving... whatever the hell it was we ended up saving. It's not the same as being expected to keep up a casual conversation with the man who completely failed at keeping your sister safe."

Snake snorted in a way that might just be a laugh. "You wouldn't think that if you'd been the one who had to put up with the lecture he gave me for not sticking around longer to make sure you were all right. Trust me, kid, he's not the type to hold a grudge over something like that; _you_ weren't the one holding the knife." He took another long slug of his beer, than produced a large beige envelope from somewhere and tossed it onto the bar in front of Raiden. "Even sent you a present."

"A present?" Raiden repeated, picking up the envelope more gingerly than such an everyday item really warranted. He wasn't used to gifts; Rose never gave him many, and nobody else in his life had ever bothered at all.

"You might say you didn't need anything from us, but he didn't agree. Go ahead and open it."

Raiden bent up the prongs holding the envelope's flap closed and opened it up to peer inside. Immediately he was very glad that he'd been smart enough not to dump the contents out for anyone to see, or else he'd have some awkward questions to answer. "Is that really..."

"It's all official, as far as anyone will be able to tell. Otacon is good at what he does."

Inside the envelope was every type of ID he could possibly want--birth certificate, social security card, driver's license, diploma, even a _library card_--all made out to the name he'd chosen to go by since taking Snake's advice and picking one of his own. "How did you guys even know I needed this?"

"We _did_ try more standard methods of looking you up before tracing the frequency," Snake said dryly. "When Otacon couldn't find a trace of you, he worked out what _they_ must've done. We waited a week to see if they wiped these too, figured that if they didn't do anything by now they must not watching for you attempting to reenter the system."

Raiden wasn't sure how to respond in a way that would show just how incredibly grateful he was for this without embarrassing them both. After a moment he decided that such a way didn't exist, and just settled for a fervent but not really sufficient, "_Thank you_, Snake."

"Otacon's the one to thank. Give him a call soon." Snake stubbed out his cigarette, and once again gave Raiden that considering look. "The name was a surprise."

Raiden ducked his head, not really wanting to explain it but knowing that he had to. "Well, I couldn't change the 'Jack'. I don't think I could ever get Rose to call me something else if I tried. So that just left the last name." He stared at his empty glass again, for the first time since Snake had spoken, and the craving to ask for another drink was stronger than ever. Maybe it would help. He hadn't explained his choice to anyone, not even Rose (not that there was ever anyone to talk to aside from her), had thought he could get away without ever needing to. But Snake deserved an answer, because it connected to him to. "I thought about it a lot, you know? And I thought, nobody gets to pick who their father is. And you might not agree with the things they do, or like them as a person, and you even might need to..." he glanced up long enough to make sure nobody was watching, then formed his fingers into a gun and pretended to shoot the air, the actual words not being something he could say in a public place with who knows how many people listening in. "All that stuff doesn't matter. You get your father's name, whatever sort of person he is. If he's a crazy bastard, you just need to try your best to live a good life and redeem it. I know 'Sears' probably isn't really it, but if he used a different one before I can't remember it. And I know it's probably crazy--"

"No, kid," Snake cut him off, and there was something that looked like understanding in his eyes. "I know what you're trying to say."

o 0 O 0 o

Raiden would never admit it, but he was glad that he'd gotten permission to call the other man Pliskin again. He knew that it was stupid, that it wasn't like Snake had changed his personality with his name or anything, but Raiden _liked_ Iroquois Pliskin more than he liked Solid Snake.

Solid Snake was a hero, someone whose shoes he'd stepped into in countless simulations, someone who Raiden had wanted to _be_ right up until they'd actually tried shaping him into Snake and he'd realized just how much it sucked. Iroquois Pliskin was just a man, if a man with a really stupid name and seemingly endless amounts of information that he could pull out of nowhere at a moments notice.

He could be a giant asshole, and a secretive bastard, then a moment later he'd be unexpectedly funny, or helpful, or outright weird. Or he'd say or do something that made Raiden feel like every would be just fine as long as they were on the same side.

Even if he'd never actually said that they were on the same side.

And it didn't matter that half the things which made him human and likable in spite of all the jackassery were facets of his personality that Raiden hadn't seen until after he'd found out who he really was; that didn't really change anything. It would still be a good long while before he'd be able to view Solid Snake as something beyond an incredible hero.

It probably said something about his skills at self-deception that it was so easy to accept that what Solid Snake was didn't really matter, because Pliskin was the one that sat beside him. Raiden didn't really care.

Raiden couldn't imagine Solid Snake ever looking like he was three seconds away from flinging bar peanuts at a TV over the results of a football game. But he silently moved the bowl out of Iroquois Pliskin's reach.

o 0 O 0 o

A month went by again without any sign of Snake, although this time Raiden had gotten the occasional vague hint from Otacon about a mission he was on. Hints that basically amounted to a mission of some sort existing somewhere and there being a good chance that Snake just happened to be in that place. Raiden had considered pushing to get at least a _little_ more information, before he'd realized that it probably wouldn't be a good idea if he wanted them to keep wasting time on him.

Raiden was still resisting the urge for a second drink, but had taken to ordering a basket of hot wings every night before going home. They were too greasy and he could never manage to eat them without making a _complete_ mess of himself, but he got a lot of them for dirt cheap and they were surprisingly good for something served at such a dingy bar. A lot better than the dinner he knew Rose would have ready for him when he went home.

Snake sat down beside him and swiped a wing in a single movement.

"Hey! Buy your own food, Pliskin."

Snake tore the meat from the bone and forced it down without even chewing, then went on to steal a swig of Raiden's scotch to wash it down before replying. "Haven't had anything to eat but rations for a week, kid, and there's nothing back home but ketchup, crackers, and weird Japanese snacks Otacon scrounged up from somewhere. You'll live." He stole another wing before Raiden even had a chance to decide whether it was worth fighting over or not.

In the end he decided not to bother, just shoving the basket in front of Snake and ordering another for himself. Snake looked tired and still smelled faintly of gunpowder to anyone as familiar with the scent as Raiden was. It didn't seem right to deny him food.

"Shouldn't you be having dinner with your girl anyway?" Snake asked after he'd finished decimating a good quarter of the wings.

"Don't remind me," Raiden responded, pulling a face.

"Still that bad a cook, huh?" Snake asked, and Raiden knew that he was laughing at him in his mind even though he kept a straight face.

"And she gets insulted if I offer to take over for a night. She thinks I'm implying that her cooking isn't good enough. Which... is true, but _still_." It was the only real recurring argument they'd had since they'd finally started being honest with each other, which Raiden thought was probably doing well, although he really wished that he could win it sometimes. "That's one of the problems."

"Trouble in paradise, kid?"

Raiden hadn't meant to say anything, had meant to just leave off at grousing about her food, but that was the problem with talking to Snake. Something about him just made it easy for things to slip out. "Not... a _problem_, exactly. I mean, I love Rose. I really do. But I can hardly stand to look at her anymore."

There was a long stretch of silence, and when Snake finally broke it he sounded awkward, out of his depth for the first time since Raiden had known him at actually being expected to talk to him about his relationship issues when he'd probably been expecting a quick brush off. "You know, Raiden. No one'll blame you if you can't get over her working for the--"

"That's not it!" Raiden quickly snapped before he could say anything else. Luckily Snake looked relieved instead of insulted at the interruption. "I don't blame her for anything _they_ made her do; we were both used by them. It might even be easier to love her, _really_ love her, knowing that she's had her secrets too, and she's not just this perfect dream girl who'd only get dirty by staying with me. It's _not_ that. It's... Solidus."

"Solidus?"

"They wanted me to kill him, you know. The Patriots. Complete their simulation, prove that they knew the strings to pull to turn people into whatever they wanted. _He_ wanted me to fight him too, to see which of us would survive against the other. It was like one of those street corner shell games; any choice you make, you're bound to lose. The only way to win is not to play at all." He slouched against the bar, letting his hair fall forward to block his view of Snake, erasing his peripheral vision as fully as Solidus' ruined eye had with the added bonus of keeping his expression hidden. This was a confession he had never spoken aloud, one that he'd sworn to himself that he'd never tell Rose.

But the only person listening now was the one person he knew of who might be able to understand, and for his ears only Raiden spoke the truth. "I don't _want_ to die, you know? But when that fight started, I was completely ready to just ignore all the threats, sheath my sword, and let him cut me down. If I'd fought to lose and hoped they'd take pity on Rose and the kid thinking I'd done my best Solidus would have been happy he'd gotten his fight to the death. If I won The Patriots would have exactly what they wanted. But not fighting at all... it was the first time in my entire life where one of the options in a choice I had to make didn't involve being played by someone else's schemes. The first time I had a real choice at all, really. And even if I'd really rather live, then and there I thought it would be better to die freely than go on as their slave."

"So, you're ashamed to face her because you almost gave up," Snake said slowly, like he was trying to feel out the right answer.

"_No._ I can't face her because, even though they were both in danger, I only chose to fight because of Olga's kid. Rose, she knew the risks she was taking when she took the job, but the kid was just an innocent victim, and Olga tried so hard to protect it..." Raiden slammed back the last of his drink then clenched his hands into fists, so tightly that his palms twinged with pain and he knew that he was leaving lines of crescent imprints all the way across them. "I can't stand to look at her because every time I do I remember that if she'd been their only captive, I would have made her die with me."

o 0 O 0 o

Snake had taken to wearing his Navy SEALs uniform when he stopped by the bar for a chat, minus its accessories. Raiden wasn't sure whether he did it to complete the illusion of 'Pliskin', or if he'd just found out somewhere that the bartender--a massive man who didn't have an inch of untattooed skin as far as Raiden had ever seen--was a dyed-in-the-wool patriot who would provide free drinks to any serviceman who showed up in uniform. He certainly took enough advantage of that little perk, even if it hadn't been why he'd started.

When he stopped to think about it, which he usually didn't, Raiden was a little surprised just how happy it made him to see that uniform. Not that it had been bad the first few times when he'd shown up dressed like he was just a normal citizen--_weird_, to see him in tee-shirts and jeans like anyone else, but not _bad_--but aside from that first visit it could have just meant that he'd randomly stopped by when he happened to be in the right area at the right time to intersect with Raiden's schedule.

The uniform made it clear that wasn't true, even if he never said anything about it. He wouldn't just be wandering around the city during his off-time pretending to be a SEAL, unless he had more weird habits than Raiden knew about. The uniform meant that it wasn't random, that it wasn't happenstance, that Snake had stood at home, decided that he was going to go visit Raiden, and dressed for the occasion.

Even if it really was just for the free drinks.

And maybe he didn't come around just for the drinks, because whenever he was there he'd always stay next to Raiden and listen to whatever he wanted to talk about. Even if it was dumb, even if it wasn't anything more than Raiden trying to work out a problem with Rose by talking about it at someone, or him bitching about the job he'd managed to find (as it turned out, 'normal and violence-free' also meant 'really damned dull'). He didn't actually seem to _care_ about whatever Raiden had to talk about, but he let him talk for as long as he needed. That was what mattered.

Maybe Snake just knew that every so often trying to build a normal life for himself among normal people left Raiden feeling like his head would explode. Maybe he understood that every so often Raiden _needed_ to spend some time around someone who really understood how ill-prepared for normalcy his past life had left him, and put up with his venting to make sure he didn't snap. Raiden was sure that the last thing Snake needed in his life was yet another insane soldier with Patriot connections (though Raiden doubted he could _ever_ crack badly enough to give himself back to them) running around.

Or maybe he wasn't really listening at all, and just let Raiden ramble on while he tuned him out. It sure _seemed_ like something he wouldn't feel the least bit guilty about doing, and every so often he did appear to start dozing off over his beer when Raiden went on to long. But if Raiden called him on it he was always able to accurately repeat whatever Raiden had just been saying.

And sometimes, rarely, he'd ask for an update on something Raiden had told him about in a past meeting. Every single time it happened, even though retaining information for a week or two was hardly the most incredible thing Snake had ever done, Raiden found himself in a good mood for the rest of the day. Sure, he might have had to build himself a new life from the ground up after having the worst day in the history of the world and discovering that everything he believed in was a lie, but if the man he respected the most was actually bothering to remember details about that new life it had to mean that at least Raiden was doing _something_ right.

o 0 O 0 o

Raiden was watching a presidential address that the bartender had up on the bars TVs when Snake settled into his usual spot next to him. It was interesting to watch, in a strange and terrible way, when you knew the truth about the Patriots. He had to wonder if the new president was as much their toy as men like Solidus who had been specially picked for the job were, or if he'd had a little more autonomy going in because he'd never been meant to sit in the Oval Office.

Not that it mattered that much. The very fact that he still had the position made it clear that he was theirs now, even if he hadn't been from the start.

His attention was pulled away by Snake making an annoyed sound beside him. He turned to see the man staring at the Lucky Strikes pack in his hand with the mournful look of a smoker who's just realized that he's out of cigarettes. It was almost enough to make Raiden laugh, seeing such a great man so affected by such a stupid vice.

"No more coffin nails, Pliskin?" Raiden asked, then, before Snake could transfer that stare to him with an added heap of annoyance, he produced a pack from his own coat pocket and passed it over. "Help yourself."

Snake raised an eyebrow at him as he thumbed a cigarette out of the pack, then grimaced after raising it to his mouth before he'd even had the chance to press a flame to it. "These are stale as hell, kid."

"What did you expect? You gave them to me months ago."

"Never thought you'd hold onto them this long," Snake said, lighting up; apparently staleness wasn't enough to make him turn away a smoke. Of course, that was to be expected. Raiden was really more surprised that he cared about that to begin with; it wasn't like Snake could expect to get fresh packs when he was on long missions, so he had to be used to it.

Then again, that might just make having fresh ones during his off-time all the more important.

"I told you I don't smoke. What did you think would happen to them?" he asked, then flashed Snake a sudden small grin. "It's not like I could just throw them out. I heard they might come in handy someday."

Snake snorted out a laugh with a lungful of smoke. "Lending them out wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but I won't complain," he said, then nodded at the TV. "What were you so wrapped up in?"

"Oh, that's nothing," Raiden said, shrugging. "He's just reassuring people for the hundredth time that he won't mess up just because he's not the guy they think they voted into office. It's getting old."

"Wouldn't have thought you'd be interested in politics."

"I'm not. Not now. But, you've got to admit, knowing what we know you could practically make a game out of listening to what he says and trying to figure out what _they're_ trying to say through him." He took a sip of his scotch, glancing up at the screen, and absently added, "I used to be really into all this, though."

"Finding out the truth ruin it for you?"

"No, the last election ruined it for me. I never cared about the politics that much, but the very first time I saw 'George Sears' I thought 'That's a leader. That's a man I'll be _proud_ to fight under as a soldier'. I donated to his campaign, passed out buttons, watched every last speech he ever gave, and was stupidly upset when he announced that he wasn't going to run for a second term." Raiden shook his head and laughed, and was surprised by how honest that laugh was. He supposed that he'd reached the point where it was hardly even worth being upset over.

"I've almost got to be impressed with my own powers of repression. In all that time I never once thought for a second that he looked familiar. Not that it was likely I'd have recognized him if I _did_ remember--maybe I would've suspected he was my 'grandfather', or an uncle of Solidus' he never told me about, but I wouldn't have guessed that _he'd_ suddenly had an age-jump into his fifties--but at least it would have let me know _why_ I was so ready to follow him, even if he didn't look exactly like the man I'd known." He glanced at Snake out of the corner of his eye, and his forehead furrowed in thought. "Come to think of it, _you_ don't look that much like him either, and you're around the age he was back then. I mean, there's a definite resemblance of course, but shouldn't you two be identical. That's the whole _point_, isn't it?"

"Don't ask me, kid. I've got no idea how what they did with us worked. My other so-called 'brother' even turned out blond somehow." He stubbed out his cigarette, then grabbed another before the glow of the butt had a chance to die away. "Would you _want_ me to look just like him?"

"God no!" Raiden said, startling himself just as much as Snake with the vehemence of the exclamation. He wasn't even sure exactly where the rush of disgust that washed through him at the question had come from, much more powerful than just his dislike for what Solidus had become would account for, but one thing was sure; even if it was weird that he didn't, Raiden did _not_ want Snake to look just like his dad.

He could only be glad when he thought about how glaring the differences were to his eyes. Solidus had always been bulked up like a football player, one more reminder of the action heroes all the boys were supposed to emulate, where Snake was more compact but each and every one of his muscles were clearly built up for use instead of show. Snake's hair was lighter, but even back then Solidus' had already been well-streaked with grey. Snake's eyes, even in his most extreme moments of bastardry, were warmer than Solidus' had been on his kindest days, though that wouldn't be recognizable to anyone who hadn't spent a lot of time watching each of them.

Raiden might be able to recognize that there was a resemblance, but he didn't think he'd ever be able to confuse one man for the other even if he went blind and deaf.

o 0 O 0 o

The first time Raiden saw Snake outside of the bar it was after the man woke him up at three in the morning by pounding on his apartment door.

Raiden grumbled all the way to the door. He'd only recently finally begun sleeping soundly on a fairly regular basis, and wasn't at all happy at being disturbed when he'd managed it. Still, even muzzy-headed from sleep his instincts didn't leave him--might even have been stronger than they'd been in months since he wasn't bothering to even pretend to be normal--and he was careful to leave the lights off, approach the door from an angle in case some Patriot tool was peering through the peephole looking for some sign of him to shoot at, and to grab a gun he had hidden behind Rose's DVD shelf as he passed it.

He was ready to shoot when he opened the door, but lowered the gun the instant he recognized who it was pointed at. "What the _hell_, Pliskin? Do you know what time it is?" he asked.

"No time to talk, kid," was all Snake said in reply, his eyes darting back and forth as he tried to keep an eye on both sides of the hall stretching away from Raiden's door. There was a stream of blood oozing from a wound at his temple that Raiden could tell had come from being grazed by a bullet, and he was holding a knife in his hand but no other weapon. "Got a gun I can borrow?"

Before he could even think to ask why Snake didn't have his own, Raiden was already holding his handgun out for him to take. "Wait two seconds and I'll grab you a few boxes of ammo too," he said, walking for the closest stash before Snake had a chance to reply. His old weapons and supplies were hidden all over the apartment, carefully tucked away in places where Rose would never need to look at them. It was almost as an afterthought that he finally asked, "What's going on, Pliskin?" as he dug up a few boxes from the bottom of an umbrella stand Rose had decided for some reason would make the apartment more homey.

"I told you, there's no time to explain," Snake said, but the look on his face told Raiden clearly that in truth whatever he was in the middle of at the moment annoyed him so much that he didn't _want_ to explain. Even though he didn't like it when he knew he was being left out of the loop, Raiden could really blame Snake for that. He knew that _he'd_ be upset with himself if he ever got caught out by an enemy when he wasn't sufficiently armed, and he wasn't even known as a great soldier, not anymore. It had to rankle Snake to be in that position.

On the way back to the door he stopped long enough to dig a band-aid out of a junk drawer, though to somebody who knew him well enough Snake was beginning to look a bit twitchy from the desire to get moving. Raiden was a little surprised at himself to realize that somehow, impossible though it would have seemed to him just months before, he'd become one of the people who could recognize those subtle signs. "Here," he said as he passed the ammo and bandage over.

"A band-aid?" Snake asked, giving him an odd look.

"So none of the blood gets in your eye, from that..." Raiden waved his hand in the air beside his own head to indicate Snake's wound. When Snake's look didn't change, Raiden rolled his eyes and grabbed the band-aid back himself. "Okay, so it's not exactly made for field medicine. But I _thought_ you were in too much of a rush to wait for me to grab a first-aid kit," he said, and reached up to roughly swipe away the blood with the base of his palm then stick the band-aid on it himself. It couldn't be called a hygienic way to dress the wound by any stretch of the imagination, but it only needed to last long enough for Snake to reach somewhere with disinfectant.

"Hn. Thanks," Snake finally said. "I'll get the gun back to you next time." Then he turned and left without any sort of good-bye.

For about three seconds after closing the after him Raiden considered just going back to bed. He was a normal man with a normal life now, and a normal man wouldn't get himself involved any further than he already had. A normal man wouldn't have had guns available to lend out to begin with.

Then he was pulling his sniper rifle out from where he had it stashed under the couch, grabbing a few pentazemin tablets out of a decorative box Rose kept on the bookshelf, and dropping to his knees in front of his window. Slowly, slowly, he inched the window open far enough to slide the muzzle of the gun through, not making enough movement to catch the eye of anyone scanning the building for a sign of Snake. There was a screen on the other side and he briefly considered just shooting through the thin wires instead of making any unnecessary movements, but aiming would already be more difficult than he liked from his position and he didn't need anything to make it worse so he grabbed a letter opener from a nearby end table and sliced the screen open across the bottom and up the center. Rose would be annoyed when she saw the damage, but they had enough money now to replace it.

Once he'd slid his gun through and had it trained towards the ground below, keeping it squeezed tightly against his body to hold it steady, he dry-swallowed a pill and settled down to wait. His eyes were the only part of him that moved, and they jumped constantly from shadow to shadow, seeking out human forms anywhere deep enough to hide one.

He didn't need to wait for long before he finally spotted movement, but it wasn't an enemy. It was the battered lost-and-found box Raiden's landlord kept out in front of the apartment building's laundry room, a stained and tattered thing which had never contained anything but a few stray socks, a mysterious lime-green corduroy jacket, and a box of worn down crayons which mothers traditionally let their kids scribble all over the cardboard with while they did the laundry in the entire time Raiden had lived there. Snake's preferred disguise had never seemed as ridiculous as it did then, with a giant upside-down smiley face grinning vacantly out at the world in the direction the box was slowly inching forward.

But Raiden didn't have long to gawk. A moment after he'd seen the box he was distracted by another movement, an armed man slowly detaching himself from one of the shadows on the street and heading forward to investigate the box. Before he could get more than an inch Raiden's finger moved on the trigger, and Raiden's bullet shattered his skull. He didn't have time to feel pride over the perfect shot, because almost as soon as he'd taken it three more men were suddenly visible, startled out of stillness by their companion's sudden death. But that was just fine, because they were looking up, searching for where the shot had come from, and paying no mind to the strange box on the street in front of them. Finer still because they had no chance to spot the muzzle of his gun sticking out of his window before three more quick shots took each of them down.

In the middle of his shots he heard the bedroom door open behind him, and once each visible enemy was dead he spared a quick glance over his shoulder. Rose was standing there in the dark, her arms curled protectively across her swollen pregnant stomach, her face almost dead-white. "Jack, what are you doing?" she whispered.

"Not now, Rose," he said, turning back to the window. Below, Snake in his box was still, waiting to see if any more enemy fighters were going to take notice of the shots fired. After a moment, so soon that if Raiden had spent any more time looking at Rose he would have missed it, the bottom of the box lifted just high enough for Snake to slip out an arm and raise it in thanks, or maybe just acknowledgement. Though he told himself he was being unfair almost as soon as he felt it, he couldn't help but be a little annoyed with Rose from almost making him not see it.

"Jack," Rose pressed on behind him, "I thought you were _done_ with all this. How could you bring it into our _home?_"

"Not _now_, Rose," he repeated, and this time his voice was a harsh snap. He would feel guilty about that later, he knew, but for the time being the only thing in the world that mattered was keeping his gun fixed on the world outside, ready to shoot down anyone who dared to threaten his friend.

It would be hours before he realized that sitting there in the dark, poised to kill at a moment's notice, was the first time he'd really felt alive since he'd watched Solidus die.

o 0 O 0 o

The next time Snake appeared at the bar, Raiden already had already emptied two glasses and was just about ready to get a third. He was stopped in the act of raising his hand to attract the bartender's attention by Snake's hand closing over his wrist and slamming it back down onto the bar surface.

"All right, kid," he said by way of greeting. "What the hell's wrong with you?"

Raiden stared at the hand still holding his down for a long moment, then slowly dragged eyes up to meet Snake's. "Nothing's wrong with me. Rose is gone," he said simply. "She lost the baby. Wouldn't even let me come to see her at the hospital, she just called me up to let me know what happened and told me that she thought it'd be better if we didn't see each other again. Said it had happened from the stress of watching me..." He trailed off, shaking his head.

She had looked so pale that night, watching him and the gun in his hands. He should have known something was wrong.

"Shit, kid," Snake said, the only thing there really was to say. He set down as the bartender brought over his customary beer without his needing to say anything, proof that they'd become regulars, but he still wouldn't let Raiden get another drink. "Listen, and trust me on this one; drinking yourself stupid never helps anything. And you're too strong to give up now."

"I'm not 'giving up'," Raiden said, finally wrenching his arm free. "It's not like this is a big surprise. I'm not an _idiot_, Pliskin, whatever you might think. It was pretty obvious that Rose and I had problems that couldn't be fixed by just telling ourselves that we'd be a normal couple with the Patriots out of the way. But I kind of hoped it would last a little while longer, and that our kid would come out of it okay, and I think I have a right to mourn that not happening for a few days." He buried his head in his hands, ignoring the looks he was getting from the other patrons of the bar. "God, this is probably the best thing that could have happened to the poor kid. We would have been a complete trainwreck as parents. I was... looking forward to trying, a little, but no kid who'd need lessons on gun safety before he could walk so he'd know what not to do whenever he found one of daddy's stashes would have a shot at growing up normally."

Snake stared at the beer in his hands silently for a minute, then slapped down the cash to cover it and Raiden's tab on the bar and stood up. "Follow me," he said, and headed for the unobtrusive door leading to the alley behind the bar.

It took Raiden's head a moment to catch up with the instruction, then he was shoving himself off his stool and practically stumbling over its leg in his haste to follow. Before he could get far the bartender reached out to grab his arm, tugging him back towards the bar. The alcohol in his body made it a little more difficult than usual for Raiden to ignore the part of him urging him to strike out against being manhandled in such a way, but he managed to force it down as the man leaned forward and muttered to him in a low voice, "I'm not gonna tell you what to do with yourselves, but if the police pass by and have gotta arrest you two for doing anything indecent in public I'll have'ta ban you from the bar. Nothing personal, just policy. So try and keep out've sight, you hear me?"

"Uh... yeah. Thanks," Raiden said, then quickly shrugged off the weirdness of the encounter to head outside.

Snake had already lit up a new cigarette and was leaning against the alley wall, giving off the air that he'd been left waiting for hours instead of just a minute. "I was planning on doing this after drinking, but it sounds like you could use some good news as soon as you can get it," he said, then tossed Raiden a syringe no bigger than the ones diabetics used to give themselves insulin sealed in a plastic baggie. "Pick a vein and fill that up."

"The good news is... you want my blood?" Raiden asked, squinting at him, confused. But even though he didn't understand, he went right ahead and began rolling up his sleeve, willing as ever to believe that if Snake was telling him to do something it would ultimately prove to be the right action to take. "Have you been picking up Vamp's bad habits?"

"Nobody will be drinking this, kid." The moment that Raiden finished drawing his own fake blood Snake snatched the syringe full of oddly shimmering liquid back out of his hand, capped it, and tossed it into a small hole in the brick wall of the alley that Raiden hadn't noticed before then before settling back against the wall again.

"Okay, is your plan to take my mind off my troubles by distracting me with weirdness?" Raiden asked. "Because if it is, you're doing a good job."

There was actually a small smile on Snake's face when he finally explained, "Otacon thinks he's ready to reprogram your nanos. He just needs a sample so he can run a few tests to be sure."

"That... doesn't explain sticking it in hole in the wall."

"Another of Otacon's ideas. If some of the machines just suddenly split off and started going off in a different direction from the rest of you, the Patriots would notice it in a second. Follow the signal straight to the safehouse he's experimenting in. But just take enough to make it look like you cut yourself, leave it in one place for a day or two..."

"...And they'll stop wasting processing power on monitoring them," Raiden finished the thought for him as he picked one up what Snake was trying to say.

"Got it," Snake said, and pushed himself away from the wall. He stopped in front of Raiden, and brought one hand up to rest heavily on his shoulder. "Next time I see you, I'll be planning to take you to get them reprogrammed. But if it looks like you're stuck in some self-destructive bent, I'm not having Otacon waste his time on you." He started to walked away, flicking his cigarette to the wind, then paused at the door with his back to Raiden. "But if you just need to get away, clear your head for awhile, I've got a cabin up north you could borrow. Just ask for the keys once Otacon's done with you. Oh, and until then you need to wear this thing. It'll give him some information he needs."

Raiden caught the box Snake tossed backwards over his shoulder before vanishing back into the bar, and for the first time in days he started to smile a little. It had been a terrible week, but with the hope of finally wiggling his way out from under the thumbs of the people who'd hovered over his entire life dangling just before him things could only get better.

Then the smile dropped into a fresh frown when he opened the box and saw the tangle of wires and metal within it. "Otacon," he said to the empty air, not thinking for a second that the man wouldn't be listening the moment he tried to get in touch with him over the Codec. "How in the world am I supposed to wear this thing?"

"Snake didn't tell you the instructions?" Otacon replied a second later, but the fond exasperation in his voice made it clear that he realized even as he said it that he should have expected as much.

"It looked like Snake barely even remembered to give me the thing. When he told me I was supposed to wear it, I was expecting something less complicated-looking."

"All right, Raiden, this will be a little more difficult since I won't be able to see if you've gotten something wrong, but I'll walk you through it step-by-step and we should get you set up without any problem. Step one, take it out of the box."

"I don't think you need to be _that_ exact, Otacon."

"Step one, _take it out of the box_," Otacon repeated firmly, in the tones of a man who knew exactly how badly things could go when instructions weren't clear enough.

"Okay," Raiden said with a sigh, tossing the box into a nearby dumpster. "Step one complete."

o 0 O 0 o

"The idea is actually really simple," Otacon said a few days later, enthusiasm obvious on his face as he helped Raiden unstrap the uncomfortable machine he'd been wearing since that night at the bar. "So simple that hopefully they'll never even suspect it, they're so used to overly complex plans."

"What _is_ the plan, Hal?" Raiden asked. He'd tried asking about it once or twice in the past, but Snake didn't know the details and Otacon would quickly change the subject as soon as it started to sound like he was even thinking about asking about it, in case the Patriots were listening in on their Codec conversations.

"Well, it's in two parts. The first, to keep them from tracking your position or eavesdropping on you when you use the Codec is, ah..." He actually looked a little embarrassed as he cleared his throat in the middle of his explanation. "...Basically, we're putting a parental block on you."

Raiden blinked at him. "What?"

"It's not an exact analogy, but it's close." Otacon adjusted his glasses as he fell into explanation-mode. "As the information-age goes on, children are being introduced to new communication technologies at younger and younger ages. At the same time, further new technology develops to keep those children away from undesirable elements. I got the idea for how to solve the first part of the problem with your nanomachines from cellphones which allow parents to program in which numbers are able to dial in or out. Once I'm done, only Snake or I will be able to contact your frequency, with the exception of your vital signs being transmitted to the Patriots. We can add others later as needed, of course, but I thought it would be easiest to start small."

Raiden raised an eyebrow at Snake, who was leaning against the wall across the room, staying out of the way of Otacon's work. "So I'll _finally_ get to learn what you switched your frequency to after Big Shell?"

Snake shrugged back at him. "No reason to keep it from you once they can't track me down through you."

"What's the second part?" Raiden asked, turning back to Otacon.

"Have you ever seen the movie _Speed_?"

Raiden frowned, thinking. "That's the one with the bus, right?"

"That's right. It's not the type of movie I'm really interested in either, so I don't blame you if you can't remember much about it. But if you remember the scene where they loop the video feed from the bus to fool the bomber, that's what we'll be doing to keep their eyes off of you." He lifted the thin metal box at the center of the tangle of wires he'd had Raiden wear and showed it to him. "With _this_ I've been recording your vital signs and position all week. Tonight, after I'm done with the first step, I'll modify the recording to make it look like you go home in the morning, then find a neat spot to loop it so as far as they're concerned you'll just keep living your life exactly the way it's been for the past few months. You've been keeping such a steady routine that I should be able to make the loop almost as long as the amount of time you were wearing my recorder. In the morning we'll finish reprogramming the nanomachine so that from now on they'll only transmit the looped recording to the Patriots, and from tomorrow on you'll be able to move freely without worrying about them spying on you, or killing Olga's child if something happens to you. Once _that's_ done, we'll have plenty of time to pin-point where the transmission leads to, and find the child."

"Are you sure that will work? It's sounds... well, it sounds like the kind of thing that only works in movies."

"Don't doubt Otacon, kid," Snake said mildly from his place by the wall. "If he says something'll work, he'll find a way to make it happen. You can count on that."

Otacon beamed, and Raiden settled back in the chair he'd been given to rest in while the other man worked. It looked like he just had to take it on faith that things would work out fine, and somehow he found himself just fine with that.

o 0 O 0 o

Otacon worked on him late into the night, testing and retesting the modifications he was making to be sure that it was turning out well. More than once he repeated "My specialty runs more towards _big_ machines. I got advice from someone who works with nanomachines more than I do on the best way to make this work, but I still want to be twice as careful as usual to make sure nothing goes wrong." Raiden wasn't totally sure which of them he was trying to reassure that he had a handle on what he was doing, which wasn't the best feeling in the world. Still, as long as nothing he was doing _hurt_, Raiden wasn't bothered by it.

On his end, the long hours were mostly just full of boredom. He didn't need to do anything during them but let Otacon hook him up to machinery, and occasionally reassure him that he hadn't suddenly started to taste the color blue or spontaneously gone deaf after the most recent fiddly change. After all the tedium he would have thought his brain would be ready to drop off immediately when he was finally pointed to a small room with a cot set up in it that he could sleep on. Instead, the instant he dropped his head to the pillow he felt the familiar feeling of insomnia settle over him, promising that sleep would not come easily that night, if it ever came at all.

For over an hour he stared blankly at the white ceiling above him, hoping that he might drill sleep into his skull through pure dullness, but eventually he gave up. He left the room in nothing but his boxers, figuring that he could at least find something to eat to pass the time, or maybe take his first proper shower in days after all the time he'd spent wrapped in wires.

Instead he was stopped in his tracks at Snake's open door, and the sight of the man himself sitting beside the open window, bare-chested, his head and shoulders hanging outside as he snuck a smoke.

"You can't sleep either?" he asked, stopping at the door.

"Usually work at night anyway," Snake replied, breathing smoke into the cold night breeze.

Raiden laughed quietly, and rest his head against the doorframe. "You can't smoke openly in your own home?"

"This isn't 'home', kid. It's not even the usual safehouse, not as long as we can't tell when the White House is taking a look at where you're spending time." He flicked his cigarette butt out the window, and let the wind sweep it away. "And you'd stick to open windows when Otacon's in the house with you too, if you'd gotten as many speeches about the dangers of smoking from him as I have."

"I'll remember that if I ever decide to start imitating your bad habits," Raiden said. They both lapsed into silence for a time, Snake apparently feeling that there wasn't any further need for conversation. Finally Raiden quietly said, "Pliskin? ...Snake? Can I ask you a question."

"You just did."

"Ha, ha. Listen; why do you keep showing up to visit me? I mean, you could have just dropped off the IDs Otacon made me, let me know he was working on a way to keep them from spying on me, then vanished again until he was ready to start working on it. You didn't need to keep showing up."

Snake shrugged, slid the window shut, and stood. "Because my life fell apart once or twice before, and I figured you could use someone around who knew what it was like. Or at least to make sure you didn't make a few of the same mistakes."

Raiden would have turned and walked away at almost any other answer he could think of; that Snake wanted to make sure he really had broken away from the Patriots, that he thought they'd come after Raiden and wanted to be there to help fight them when it happened, that some weird sense of family values made him watch out for the guy who could have been his nephew if Raiden hadn't been grabbed away from Solidus the minute the war had ended and if he'd ever actually had real contact with his clone brother.

But the fact that it had been for Raiden's own sake, free of other concerns, made the young man slowly step forward into the room and close the distance between himself and Snake. He noticed vaguely as he walked that the room was just as bare as his own had once been, although nobody could really read anything into that when they weren't even in Snake's home, but nothing seemed wrong about it to him. "I was hoping it was something like that," he said in a low voice, then slowly, giving the man plenty of time to back off or shove him away, leaned up to press his lips to Snake's. He thought in some distant part of his mind that this should really feel more like a terrible betrayal to Rose, even if she was gone now, but mostly he was just aware of how very long he'd been wishing for a chance to do this.

He'd never even had any idea if Snake felt the same way or not, but he got his answer quickly enough when he pulled him backwards far enough to kick the door shut then dragged him down onto the room's small bed, somehow not breaking the kiss for an instant.

o 0 O 0 o

"I think that's it!" Otacon exclaimed cheerfully the next morning as he put the final touches on his modifications to the machines in Raiden's artificial blood. He seemed completely oblivious to what had happened between Raiden and Snake the night before. "So, now that you're off the grid what are you planning to do?" he asked.

Raiden glanced at Snake, who wasn't acting any differently than he ever had in the past, then grinned. "You know, normal life really isn't working out that well. Any chance you guys have a spot open in Philanthropy for me?"

Otacon was instantly on his feet, welcoming Raiden on board without even taking the time to discuss it, but Raiden's eyes were on Snake alone. When he smiled slightly and inclined his head in Raiden's direction, saying clearly without words that he was pleased with his choice, Raiden knew that he was doing the right thing.


End file.
